When Disgruntled NJ Transit Customers Fight Back: Act One....

Eyes wide open. Standing in Hoboken's New Jersey Transit train station. Heartbeat accelerating at an alarming rate, sweat slowly trickling down my forehead. I better do this fast, I must seem as suspect as Sarah Palin in a MENSA meeting.

It's time to rock. You brought this upon yourselves, transit folk.

My grip on the Easton baseball bat is vice-grip tight. Both hands wrapped around the bottom handle, right digits atop the left. In the background, increasingly louder and angrier shouts of "Step away from there!" and "Are you fucking crazy!" reverberate through my one ear, and swiftly out the other. Their commands are powerless. All I can see, hear, taste, and even smell is rage, years' worth of vengeance honed directly on to the New Jersey Transit ticket machine resting 30 inches away from my front.



"You won't make me miss any more trains now, motherfucker....no more malfunctions causing in-a-hurry commuters unnecessary tension, you manmade electronic disgrace."

To think, if only one of NJ Transit's many employees would've dropped a "Need to fix and/or update our ticket machines" note into the company suggestion-box, just once, the pummeling that's about to commence could've been avoided. The Hoboken Police Department would've been able to continue standing on their homebase's front steps ogling female passers-by, like any other day or night. The elderly woman to my immediate left hoping to catch a train back to her loving husband in Suffern wouldn't have suffered her heart attack, kicked in at the sight of an animalistic twentysomething male turning the entire train station into batting practice, determined to knock off heads like they were fastballs, treat machine-bottoms like Nancy Kerrigan's legs.

Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda. Too fucking late now.

The first THWACK shatters the machine's screen, giving a whole new meaning to its favorite on-screen phrase "Out Of Service." As my arms cock back for Strike Two, an overzealous, wannabe-hero Transit employee---probably just a poor engineer on his lunch break---tackles me, bringing both our bodies crashing to the floor. "Put the goddamn bat down!" he orders. As if I'm even hearing him. Moving my left hand up to the bat's top-half, now holding it like I would a broom, I hurl the pain-stick backwards into his sternum with the force of a battering ram. Drops of blood sneeze out of his mouth before he wiggles in agony.

Back to the mission at hand.

Four more violent bat-lashes against the machine. Coins begin dispensing, rapid-fire-style, on to the floor. Okay, this one's officially busted...on to the next. Speed-walking across the platform to Unlucky Machine II, I hear money-hungry, opportunist commuters sprinting to the now-free currency sprayed all over the concrete walkway, yelling and clawing their way to the nearest George Washington face. Riotous.

Another wannabe-hero---this one a police officer---runs up on me, promptly met with an "Easton" sign to his right cheek, slumping his body to the ground in an un-bent, "stand up straight, young man" position, like a tree cut at its roots. And then another bat-to-skull, and another. Who'd of thought Hoboken had so many foolishly-heroic people. By this point, I'm swinging at whoever's in my direct vicinity---men, women, workers, pedestrians, officers.

Shit, keep yours eye off of her. Stick to the plan. Kick it to a chick at a bar later on, if anything. To my left, a drop-dead-stunning woman, about my age and with long black hair/caramel-coated skin/hourglass frame/belly exposed above seemingly-painted-on denim, is glancing my way in astonishment. Intrigued. Strangely attracted. Giving me that look of You're a bad boy. I need to discipline you something fierce, huh? Come over here.

Must resist. Stick....to the....plan.

Shaking my head, ridding my thoughts of their perverted urges, I turn back toward Unlucky Machine II. Only, Unlucky Machine II is being blocked. By a cop. With his nightstick in the air, in his right hand. Then driving it down. On to my face.

Lights out.....

Eyes wide open. Back to reality, standing in front of a ticket machine that's expectedly not doing it's one-and-only job. Operating like a horse's ass on a bad day. Showing little compassion toward a tired guy named Matt, who's been waiting on thia slow-as-molasses line for 25 excruciating minutes just to buy a measly $5 ticket so he can get home and have dinner with his parents, brother, sister-in-law, and the Gianna/Nicholas tag team of awesome. Knowing that the result of it's refusing to dispense my ticket will be a "Five Dollar Surcharge for all tickets bought on this train," translating to a five-dollar-ass-raping at the hands of NJ Transit, for no justifiable reason other than swindle-addiction-satiation. Repeatedly spitting my barely-wrinkled $5 bill back at me, as if it's saying "You know what? I feel like fucking your day up some more, jerkoff." Causing irritating Mrs. Bitch on line behind me to do-her-namesake and moan. Wish I had an Easton bat on me, that'd shut her up.

"The 5:25pm train to Waldwick, now departing," says the robotic lady into the loudspeaking PA system.

Great, that's now the second fucking train I've missed, thanks to you, you piece-of-shit ticket machine.

Defeated, I smash the side of my clenched right fist into the machine's own right side as I walk away. Surely raising a few civilian eyebrows in the process. Like you all can't feel my pain right now. Cowards. On to the next frustrating, inoperable, blood-pressure-cooking NJ Transit ticket-machine-from-hell. Hades. The fiery pits below.

Otherwise known as the New Jersey Transit train station, of Hoboken, New Jersey. The fifth circle.